


A Lovely Charm Bracelet

by darthneko



Series: What Matters Most [8]
Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: Holidays, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Post Mpreg, Romantic Fluff, Threesome - M/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-22
Updated: 2017-09-22
Packaged: 2019-05-25 12:48:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14977487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darthneko/pseuds/darthneko
Summary: The spring festival of love was an old tradition, a time for courting couples. Other relationships had been acknowledged over the years - families exchanging gifts, apprentices leaving flowers for their craftmasters, teachers gifted with handfuls of sweets from their classes. And someone, at some point, had had the brilliant idea of making a gift to the throne, a token of appreciation - and hopefully recognition and favor - to the King.Needless to say, that tradition had caught on like wildfire. Over time it had become a gesture rather than a deliberate attempt to curry favor - respect for the throne and the King, Anduin's father had told him once, a renewal of the oath their fighters gave to the kingdom.That his father had said the words through gritted teeth had been beside the point.





	A Lovely Charm Bracelet

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally a chapter in the bits and pieces collection "Life is to be Savored" - I'm breaking them out into individual fics so that things can be put in chronological order.

"Good morning, Your Majesty," was the first warning he had, a little too bright and cheerful, the throne room guards all smiling a little too broadly. Anduin shook his head ruefully.

"Already?"

The senior guard grinned, utterly unrepentant. "It's not so bad, sir.... yet."

"Yet," Anduin echoed dubiously. His willingness to play along with the game made their smiles broader still, both guards moving to sweep back the doors to the throne with more enthusiasm than strictly necessary. 

The audience line had already formed, which didn't make it that different from most days except for the composition of the line - even at a glance Anduin could count more mercenaries than tradesmen, when usually it was the reverse. It was the throne itself that was the source of the guards' amusement; or rather, the two small wrapped boxes resting there, given place of pride on the cushion. 

Anduin plucked them from the throne. The gift boxes fit in his palm, heavier than they looked, with a metallic sort of jingle to them. "Only two?" he noted, jesting. 

"He's being very restrained," Harthford, his personal guard for the day, replied straight faced. The older man had served as a guard to Anduin's father as well, and his grin was badly hidden behind his beard. 

Anduin chuckled, slipping the boxes into the pocket of his coat and took his seat on the throne, nodding to the minister in charge of organizing the audience line to proceed. The guards thought it a joke and he would play along accordingly, but he knew precisely who the two small gift boxes had come from, and the weight of them in his pocket sparked an answering warmth in his chest - though how his mates had managed it, when he would have sworn they had been at his side all night, was a mystery perhaps best left to the monk training masters.

* * * * *

The spring festival of love was an old tradition, a time for new courtings and spring weddings or renewal of old vows. The streets of Stormwind were awash in flower and sweet vendors, doing a brisk business to young and old alike. Somewhere in the midst of the traditions for couples there had been acknowledgements of other relationships added on over the years - families exchanging gifts, apprentices leaving flowers for their craftmasters, teachers gifted with handfuls of sweets from their classes. And someone, at some point, had had the brilliant idea of making a gift to the throne, a token of appreciation - and hopefully recognition and favor - to the King.

Needless to say, that tradition had caught on like wildfire. Over time it had become a gesture rather than a deliberate attempt to curry favor - respect for the throne and the King, Anduin's father had told him once, a renewal of the oath their fighters gave to the kingdom. 

That his father had said the words through gritted teeth had been beside the point. No matter how many headaches he gave himself from clenching his jaw over the week of the festival, or the explosive rants Anduin had been party to in private, Varian Wrynn had been the model of a gracious king to the public, accepting each and every token gift with polite acknowledgement. Anduin, in turn, could do no less. 

It might, once, have been gifts of actual jewels and precious metals, meant to buy favor with the throne. If so, that time was long gone; tradition was for a handcrafted trinket and the pattern that had been struck upon was simple enough that most guardsmen and mercenaries could craft the things themselves, with varying levels of personalization. Jewelsmiths did a thriving business during the week as well, selling the supplies, extruded metal wire coils and assorted findings. The end result was a bracelet, linked plates of wire wrapped carven charms made of materials that best suited the giver - Anduin had seen them in wood and stone, though many mercenaries used bone, cleaned and dried, cut into disks and finely carved. Wrapped in brass or copper, sometimes even in silver or gold or more exotic metals, and traditionally signed with the crafter's name on one of the charms. 

The charm bracelets had, for many years, been a favorite gift among peers and friends, leaving the flowers and sweets to actual couples. It was personal without being too precious, the work that went into it the majority of the actual gift. Children made them out of bits of wood and string or ribbons, passing them freely amongst themselves. Some, made by actual jewelsmiths with precious stones set into each cast metal charm and the whole linked smoothly by gold chain, were used in lieu of rings during proposals. And every year, the throne received hundreds of them, handmade tokens of loyalty and respect. 

It was ridiculous on the face of it, but Anduin tried to take it in the spirit of the tradition - it was a reason for the men and women who willingly stood on the kingdom's front lines to have a chance to meet their king, a brief moment or two of personal recognition for their hard work. The tokens themselves were just that - tokens. It was the people involved that were the important part, and he tried to remember the name of every audience approacher who was called out, so as to thank them personally for their service. The charm bracelets themselves were a blur, his staff already well trained and prepared to whisk them away, and what was done with them Anduin honestly wasn't sure. 

The only ones of any importance to him, personally, were the ones in his pocket, gifts from his mates who had, each, carried arms for the Alliance at different points in time. That they had taken the time to carry through with the tradition when there really was no need made Anduin smile, for more reasons than one. From Ren, it was a gift of sentiment - his consort might not have chosen loyalty to the Alliance, but his loyalty to Anduin himself was unshakeable. 

From Hardwire... well, _that_ was a tradition in and of itself, and one Anduin was glad to see unbroken after all of the pain of the last months. 

Hardwire was entirely the reason his guards were grinning, waiting for the other shoe of the joke to drop - because joke it had been, a long standing one between the Pandaren monk and the elder Wrynn. Anduin, who had watched it over the years, had wondered, sometimes, how much of it was a joke and how much might be serious. One token, given to a liege lord, was right and proper. Multiple tokens, given day after day after day, was outright attention seeking, and had, in Hardwire's case, been accompanied by such blatantly outrageous flirtation that Anduin swore he could _see_ his father's blood pressure rising by the second. 

Not that the Pandaren was alone in this - Anduin had also seen others, women and men both, attempt to inject some personal feeling into the act of gift giving, which his father had always turned a blind eye and unresponsive shoulder to, treating it as no more or less than any other gift token. Hardwire's claim to fame had been the fine line between jesting and seriousness that he had effortlessly threaded, along with the sheer lengths he had been willing to go to in order to get a rise out of the elder Wrynn. 

The time Hardwire had been in Kalimdor, for instance, when Varian had heaved a sigh of relief that perhaps the festival might go smoothly for once - only to find himself receiving packages from Goblin couriers from Kalimdor multiple times a day. 

Or the time when, upon entering the throne room for morning audience, he had found the entire throne covered, every inch, in bracelets.

_That_ had resulted in one of Hardwire's temporary 'banishments' from Stormwind, wherein he usually took refuge in the Dwarven inn, the proprietor of which was only too happy to claim the building as sovereign Ironforge territory, the acknowledged embassy, and therefore not technically Stormwind at all. It had let the both of them save face until Varian's temper had exhausted itself. 

When Anduin had been younger the ongoing feud and yearly joke had been a source of amusement - a grand jest, one that let his father rant and snarl about the joke in safety, while refraining from too much overt snarling about his personal opinion of the holiday in general. After the discovery of Pandaria itself, and his own time in it, he had wondered, sometimes - if there was any thread of truth in the joke, if there was more to it than old friends and the tradition of a prank. If he and his father might not share a few things in common, and that had given him more than a few sleepless nights in the last months with questions he could in no way ask. 

_(No, Ren had assured him, having already gotten the story from Hardwire at one point. No, it hadn't been anything other than friendship, and Anduin could admit to himself that he had been greatly relieved. It had been hard enough working through to his own satisfaction his feelings for his father's friend, without it being anything infinitely more complex or worse.)_

But it wasn't Varian Wrynn who sat on the throne this holiday, and it hadn't taken the height of observation to note Hardwire's lowered ears or the way the subject had fallen to the wayside. "It won't be the same," Hardwire had admitted grudgingly. Anduin had stroked his ears, whole and ragged alike, in silent sympathy.

"Then do it for me," he had suggested, trying to tease, anything to ease the somber pain that crept in at the edges whenever Hardwire thought too hard on the events of the Broken Shore. "And unlike my father, I promise to wear it."

That had gotten him a small but genuine smile, and now there were two boxes in his pocket to be opened later, bracelets he would happily wear that evening, something for the older cubs to exclaim over and his mates to see. Anduin slipped his hand into his pocket between audiences, touching the gifts lightly, and turned with willingness to the next mercenary who approached the throne with a box in hand.

* * * * *

It was late into the audience hours when the royal Consort and his cousin unexpectedly turned up in line.

Anduin almost had to look twice when their names - sans title or any other fanfaire - were called, the surprise making him slow. They were both of them in travel clothes, leathers worn smooth and supple, ragged and stained, the sort of clothes for hunting, fishing, and sleeping out on the road. They had obviously been out somewhere; Elwynn forest, Anduin suspected, part of Hardwire's ongoing campaign to train Ren back into some semblance of fitness after the birth of the babes. There was dirt and what looked like fresh blood stains on their clothes, and there would probably be venison or roast boar on the dinner table. 

Dirty and disheveled, and Ren, at least, was visibly tired, and both with small gift boxes in hand and the most shit-eating grins Anduin had ever seen. He didn't, in that moment, know whether to kiss them or box their ears. 

Fortunately, propriety decreed that he do neither, and Anduin spent the next several minutes sympathizing with his father's gritted teeth as the two approached the dais and they wall went through the pantomime of a very proper gift and receipt to the throne. "Two?" he whispered archly, when he was accepting the box from Hardwire's hand. Ren chuckled and Hardwire grinned, all teeth and an expression Anduin was sure had provoked most of the bar fights his father and Hardwire had ever been in. 

"You're a smart cub," Hardwire said softly, laughter rumbling through his voice. "You'll figure it out."

Anduin snorted softly, taking the gift box, and only raised his voice as he stepped back. "The Alliance thanks you for your service." He let his voice soften when he looked at Ren, trying to let his voice and eyes convey what he couldn't by touch in front of an audience hall full of people. "I thank you."

They bowed, matching dips in the stately Pandaren fashion, and that was the end of the little joke. Anduin shook his head to himself as he watched them go, then had to rescue the box he was holding from the overly efficient reach of his aide. "Gifts from family I'll keep," he told the man firmly, slipping the boxes into the pocket opposite the others. 

The man blinked at him, then turned so fast he almost stumbled to blink at the retreating backs of the two Pandaren. "That was..."

"My consort, having a bit of a jest," Anduin agreed, and waved away the man's apology, directing him back to the task at hand. His guards, when he glanced at them, were grinning and still looked as though they were waiting for another part of the joke to manifest, but the rest of the audience went smoothly, as did all other duties for the day. It was only at the end of the day, having finished the last council, that Anduin remembered the the small boxes that were jingling in his pockets.

Bone and pieces of softer types of stone, carved and polished and wrapped in gold wire. Hardwire carved shapes into his - the ox, tiger, crane, and cloud serpent of the August Celestials, depicted in stylized lines where several short marks could become the graceful figure of a crane among reeds. Ren, Anduin was unsurprised to see, carved words into his, miniscule Pandaren writing carved in a steady hand, and the charms washed in blue ink with the words picked out in a glint of gold paint. He had to puzzle over the words for awhile, trying to make sense of them, and when he did it made him laugh - the charms were named, one after the other, for the pieces of the strategy game they had first played when a polite Lorewalker had been struggling to keep a bored and bed bound injured Prince from feeling too isolated. 

Four bracelets. Anduin slipped one onto each wrist, Ren's to the left and Hardwire's to the right, feeling the unfamiliar weight of them and admiring the work that had gone into them. For all the handmade roughness, they were fine enough pieces to look at, and he wondered idly if his mates might enjoy seeing them on him, one to each wrist and ankle. He had, after all, promised to wear them. 

As it turned out, his mates _did_ quite enjoy that, and Anduin was feeling very well pleased with himself the next morning when he approached the throne room...

To find another two identical boxes on the throne, in precisely the place the previous two had been the day before. 

"Very restrained," Harthford - who had opted for audience duty all that week and was obviously enjoying himself immensely - assured him. Anduin agreed mildly, slipping the boxes into his pocket.

He was, as Hardwire liked to tease him, a 'clever cub', and more than capable of doing rudimentary math as the scope of the quiet prank became clear. Four bracelets a day, an entire week of festival - the charms were not without weight and bulk and seven to each limb would easily create a solid mass from wrist to elbow, ankle to knee, if not beyond. 

And he had _promised_. 

The morning was spent with the problem circulating quietly in the back of his mind as he went through the motions - bowing, thanks, listening, judging - that made up a set of audience hours little different from the day before. When his mates arrived right on schedule towards the end of the audience, their grins even more smug than the day before, Anduin smiled serenely back at them and accepted the additional gift boxes with every outward evidence of sincere pleasure.

"Well played," he whispered to them, which made their ears prick up, suppressed laughter rumbling through Ren's chest and Hardwire's open mouthed grin of delight nearly infectious. 

The bracelets, he found afterwards, were different from the day before, Hardwire's full of fish and turtles that were recognizable despite the minimal lines, and Ren's uncolored but inscribed with a line of verse that Anduin had to turn over several times before finding the reading order of, something from the history scrolls that his mate had first tried to teach him written Pandaren from. There had been real work and thought put into them, and Anduin carefully slid them on, exactly as he had the day before, and then went to dinner with a smile. 

He took the teasing at his easy 'defeat' and 'cheat' method of wearing each bracelet only once on the day of gifting with a good nature and an easy, sheepish shrug. He hadn't counted on them pranking him, he admitted, which was true enough, but he _would_ wear each bracelet at least once - he had promised.

And they _did_ like how their handiwork looked on him, after the cubs had been put to bed and it was just the three of them, when they had worked their way through the layers of his court clothes to bracelets and skin and nothing but. That, alone, made it quite worth it in Anduin's book.

But 'defeat' was not a word that his father had ever taught him. So he smiled, and took the teasing, and each successive day's allotment of bracelets, admiring each in turn without so much as a hint of other thought anywhere to be seen. And the week continued on.

* * * * *

Twenty-eight bracelets. By the end of the week there were twenty-eight of the things, all laid neatly in a carven wood box with velvet lining that had taken up residence in a drawer in Anduin's office. His mates were, no doubt, looking forward to seeing their last efforts on him that evenings; Ren had remarked that it was a good look, and he hoped Anduin might occasionally continue wearing them after the festival.

It was the last evening of the festival, the flower and sweet sellers finally closing up shop and taking stock of their sales. The festival merchants were taking down the temporary stalls set up in the market squares. And the King of Stormwind had, through much arranging, several hours of free time without interruption, a spool of gold jewelry wire, and a set of the small tools that the festival merchants had been happily selling all week. 

The subterfuge had been the hardest part of the shuffle and he felt some small twinges of guilt for involving his eldest daughter and sons in the scheme. The cubs had been delighted, though, with the opportunity to play hide and seek with their father and uncle. It wasn't *their* fault that said father and uncle didn't know they were playing, being under the impression that they were helping SI:7 round up delinquent cubs who had escaped from their lessons. 

_"Keep 'em running around for a few hours and make sure the kids don't take any heat from it," Renzik had rattled off, chuckling. "You got it, boss." The Goblin had a sharp gaze, his grin showing a number of teeth, but Anduin had long ago learned to tell humor from threat in Renzik's expression, and for this task Mattias Shaw's second had a better head for and appreciation of pranks than Shaw did. Also less respect for Anduin's position and far more willingness to say exactly what was on his mind, which was something Anduin had grown to rely on even when Renzik's sharpness didn't spare **him** any. "Want me to tell the staff morning audience is canceled, too? Can't imagine you're going t' be up or walkin' straight by then, and if you are then Stoneclaw isn't puttin' the effort in."_

_"Push it back by two hours," Anduin had told him, and though he knew he kept his expression in check there must have been flags of color on his cheeks because Renzik laughed, thumping his fist against Anduin's hip - shoulder height to the Goblin - and wished him luck._

Luck, Anduin had quickly concluded, was going to be pulling off what he had in mind in the time allotted. Twisting the wire into shape wasn't as easy as the countless bracelets that had passed through his hands in the last week implied, smaller and more delicate to the touch than fixing the metal bits of saddle or travel gear would have been. His link twists were rough in comparison to the neat wrappings his mates had made, but they held together sufficiently, and that would have to be good enough. 

He worked quickly in order to have time to spare - time enough to retire to the royal quarters and wash up, and from that point there was only the moment of truth. Anduin left half the lamps unlit, raked back the damp strands of his hair, and set about laying the stage. 

Twenty-eight bracelets, all sized large for his wrists though they fit snuggly around his ankles. He had left the first four aside, exactly as they had been given to him, and those four went as they had the first evening, one to each limb. 

Of the twenty-four remaining, it took one and most of another to loop around his neck, the remnant of the second dangling into the hollow of his throat. The feel of it was strange; Anduin had never given much thought to jewelry outside of the family rings he habitually wore, and the charms were cool against his skin, the weight odd where it hung on his neck. 

Twenty-two after that, and it had taken a full fifteen to span the width of his hips, wire loops linking the chains in rows, one atop the other, to create a three wide belt of sorts. The charms and wire were cold to the touch against bath warmed skin, making him suck in a breath through his teeth, but warmed quickly enough after. The seven left over had been attached by one end each to the lowest links of the belt - three to the back, four to the front, the weight of them pulling the chains that spanned his hips downward, the whole of it jingling every time he moved. 

Twenty-eight bracelets and not a single stitch otherwise. It was utterly indecent and didn't hide a damned thing, skin and scars all laid bare, and the drape of the charm bracelets between the front of his thighs only highlighted how much they weren't covering.

His mates teased about his blushes but this went so far beyond that it felt like his skin was scoured raw and sensitive, aware of every brush of air, the swing and weight of the charms, and all of it sinking an expectant heat into his veins. Taking a shuddering breath, Anduin settled gingerly onto the bed, knees spread and feet tucked beneath him. He didn't glance at the looking glass on the armoire, not wanting to see - there were some things one couldn't judge for themselves, he told himself firmly, and the truth would be in his mate's eyes, not what a silvered glass told him. 

The effort and sentiment were the actual gift, after all, not the charm strung bracelets themselves. And he had promised, and the weight of twenty-eight promises made by his mates hung tantalizing against his skin, each carven charm a promise of love and devotion beneath the semblance of the prank. 

_Concentrate. Feel._ Wise words, from wise mates, and Anduin let his eyes close, listening to the less-than-steady sound of his own breaths. 

When the time came he could feel the rhythm of his heart in his skin, throbbing through his veins, his body strung tight in the slow pulse of anticipation. The sound of the door opening made his heart skip a beat and all the answer he needed was in the breathless exclamation Ren made and Hardwire's rough, growled purr of appreciation. 

Anduin opened his eyes to meet the matching hungry gazes of his mates, not trying to hide his relieved and slightly smug smile, and wordlessly spread his arms in invitation.


End file.
